My Pokemon Gym: Grass

My Pokemon Gym: Grass

I guess this is a thing now. And by that, I mean I’ve already done three Pokemon types in this format — why not do all of them over time? In all seriousness, I love the adventure that is theorycrafting. It’s something I’ve done for a while on other games, but I’ve kept that madness to spreadsheets in my Google Docs, safe from the sight of others. There’s not a ton of people that want to read about theorycrafting for Fire Emblem or Brave Frontier anyway. But oddly enough, Pokemon theorycrafting gets a lot of clicks and interaction. So why not keep trying? As I’ve done on previous Pokemon team/gym style posts, I’ll be sharing the six Pokemon on my team, along with their held items and moves. I’ll also be giving a little additional background into why I’ve chosen each of these Pokemon. I won’t be using legendary Pokemon on my team, as has been the case in previous posts. Additionally, I’m not going to use Pokemon I’ve used in previous team posts on this list. As we get deeper into the type list, this could prove more challenging1I’m going to be saving Normal and Flying for the end for a reason.. That said, I also tried to mirror this team to how I play Grass types in games. Want to read my other My Pokemon Gym posts? Go read the Fighting, Ice, and Psychic type posts when you’re done here. Thanks to Stephanie for suggesting that Grass should be the next type in this series.

Decidueye

Grass is one of the few Pokemon types where I actually have multiple Pokemon I’d use as my lead. I’ve opted to make my other typical choice the anchor to this team (as it’s the closest thing I could think of to being my signature Grass Pokemon2There is a second Grass Pokemon that I’d say fills that role too, but I’m saving it for a later team thanks to its other type.). I quite enjoy that Decidueye gets access to a ton of tempo-changing moves such as Tailwind and U-Turn, making it a surprisingly good lead. The only problem I have with it is the lack of a good item to put on it, so if you have better ideas than Spell Tag for this type of role, I’d love to hear them.

Tangrowth

Tangrowth: stalling out teams since 2006. In all seriousness though, I love how Tangrowth is such a verstile bulky Pokemon. There’s a ton you can do with it, ranging from being a wall to a physical attacker, to a special attacker, to a mixed attacker. I’ve tried to reflect that in the moveset below. It’s probably not the best set you could have on Tangrowth, but it is the one that epitomizes what Tangrowth is to me.

Mega Abomasnow

I really don’t like most mega Grass types. I mean, they’re fine, but they’re not what I prefer to use in battle. Kind of like Grass types in general. That said, there are some objectively good Mega Grass types, of which Abomasnow is one of them. Having Mega Abomasnow on the team allows me to pay homage to my favorite type — Ice — while allowing me to have some coverage against a few worrisome types. The beauty to Mega Abomasnow is that it doesn’t care about Speed. You will always outspeed it. It’s here to hit things hard, no matter how that needs to happen.

Vileplume

I’m very pro-Oddish and wanted to make sure the Oddish line was represented on my team. While a lot of people like Bellossom, I prefer Gloom’s other end stage as the end evolution of this line. Though this team is surprisingly filled with physical attackers and tanks, Vileplume serves as my coverage special attacker. There’s not a ton of coverage against Fire types on this team, and Vileplume continues that trend. If nothing else, it should be able to take out most anything else that it comes across.

Tsareena

Gen VII has some really good Grass type Pokemon…is a sentence I never thought I’d say about any Pokemon generation. That said, nearly all of my cuts from this team came from Gen VII, including Lurantis, Dhelmise, and Shiinotic. That doesn’t even take into consideration Kartana, which is pseudo-legendary. Tsareena is best known for its signature move, Trop Kick3Not to mention being the most likely candidate in Pokemon for Rule 34 this side of Gardevoir., but it’s also a shockingly bulky Pokemon. The goal here is for Tsareena to serve two purposes — to be the Sunny Day setter for my anchor Pokemon, as well as to hopefully take something down with it.

Leavanny

Instead of using one of my favorite scout Pokemon as a lead, I’ve decided to use Leavanny as my cleanup ‘mon. Leavanny is here for all the critical hits ever, driven in part by its Chlorophyll ability. Yes, this is a double-edged sword against Fire types. But it’s worth the boosted speed. The lone downside to this is that I’m choosing to carry Sunny Day as a just-in-case move. While I’d love to get Sunny Day from anyone earlier in this list, Grass type are generally not known for their speed. Using Mega Sceptile over Mega Abomasnow just to set up Sunny Day seemed like a waste, so I put it on one of my bulky team members, kept it on Leavanny as a fail safe, and decided to leave Fell Stinger off of Levanny’s moveset.